Related Tags:

“‘Wanted’ is very much a love letter. It was written basically just to tell a girl how I felt about her,” Hunter told Radio.com. “It didn’t actually work but I’m okay with that. I got my single, I got my song and I’m okay with that.”

He got much more than that. The song (which Hunter cowrote with Troy Verges) reached Number One on Billboard‘s Country Songs and Country Airplay charts. It also earned him a GRAMMY nomination earlier this year, and now it has been nominated for both Song of the Year and Single of the Year at this year’s Academy of Country Music Awards. The video for the song has also been nominated for Video of the Year.

On top of that, Hunter was in the running for the fan-voted Best New Male Vocalist as well (his James Bond-themed voting campaign videos are clever and still fun to watch), though that nod wound up going to Brantley Gilbert.

Hunter further explained to us how “Wanted” came together.

“I went in to write this song and I was definitely just desperately trying to get the point across to this girl,” he said. “Those are the songs that really write themselves very quickly. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about this one or over-thinking it.”

Hunter said he isn’t exactly sure how “Wanted” happened, as he just spoke the words “into outer space and we just typed everything we could think of.” Later, he sat at the piano as the rest of the lyrics fell into place.